Mark Walsh is a contributing writer to Education Week. He has covered legal issues in education for more than two decades. He writes about school-related cases in the U.S. Supreme Court and in lower courts.

A federal appeals court has rejected a Connecticut school district's request for an expedited appeal in a lawsuit over the district's efforts to hold high school graduation ceremonies at a large Christian church.

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that a sentence of life in prison without parole for a juvenile offender in a non-homicide case violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Thurgood Marshall had one word for Elena Kagan in 1988 when she suggested a school district did not violate the equal-protection clause when it refused to waive a bus transportation fee for a poor student.